The speaker was a senior admission officer at a well-known, well-respected college. And the blame he was determinedly trying to avoid was responsibility for this year’s “insane” rejection rates at some of the nation’s more selective colleges.

Columbia University accepted just 6.9% of applicants, making it the second most selective college in the Ivy League, just behind Harvard, which accepted 6.2% of kids who applied. Last year, Columbia accepted 9.2% of applicants.

Columbia, while the most dramatic in terms of increased selectivity, was certainly not alone this year. Dartmouth accepted just 9.7% of kids who applied, down from 11.5% for the class of 2014. Penn went from 14.2% for the class of 2014 to 12.3% for the class of 2015.

And the trend was not limited to Ivy League colleges. Stanford accepted only 7% of applicants – a slight tightening from 7.3% the year before; Amherst 12.8% compared to 15.3% a year ago. Northwestern accepted only 17.9% compared to 27% a year earlier.

Class of 2014 Acceptance Rate

Class of 2015 Acceptance Rate

Brown

9.3%

8.7%

Columbia

9.2%

6.9%

Cornell

16.7%

18.0%

Dartmouth

11.5%

9.7%

Harvard

6.9%

6.2%

Penn

14.2%

12.3%

Princeton

8.2%

8.4%

Yale

7.5%

7.4%

Stanford

7.3%

7.0%

Northwestern

27.0%

17.9%

Amherst

15.3%

12.8%

Wesleyan

20.0%

23.0%

UCLA

22.7%

9.8%

Chicago

18.8%

15.8%

What happened?

Technology happened, mostly in the form of the Common App. The Common App, as virtually every high school kid knows – and parents are more slowly coming to understand – is a single online application form being used by more and more colleges. Some 400 colleges and universities currently use the Common App.

Columbia is one of them. And this year was the first year Columbia utilized the service, which is provided by a non-profit consortium of high schools and colleges. Because of the ease of clicking the mouse – simply adding Columbia to the list of colleges to which a student wants his or her Common App submitted – Columbia received a staggering 35,000 applications. up from 26,000 the year before.

Not that Columbia admission folks weren’t expecting the jump. “By virtue of our continued commitment to outreach and access, an increasing global awareness of Columbia’s reputation, and our new membership with The Common Application, we anticipated and were prepared for an increase in applications,” said Jessica Marinaccio, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Columbia.

The Common App isn’t the only game in town. ConnectEdu’s SuperApp allows kids to complete one online application, and then designate which of 1500 participating colleges the application should be sent to. Some colleges receive kids’ applications digitally, while others download and print out paper versions.

Another tech company called College Essay Organizer focuses on just one aspect of the college admission process: the incredibly important essay. The problem for students is that there isn’t just one essay – although that is what the Common App includes. NYU, for example requires kids to submit three supplemental essays along with one of 27 different program-specific essays. Syracuse asks for four supplemental essays and one of five program specific pieces. And USC requires three supplemental essays, 10 “short-takes,” one optional essay and one of 24 program-specific essays.

For the million-plus high school seniors who each apply to more than five colleges, keeping the essay requirements is a real challenge. CEO’s niche is helping students keep all these different essays requirements straight; and reducing the seemingly infinite variety of different topics by finding the common denominators among the various requirements.

Now let’s be straight about this: colleges love having this “problem” of too many kids applying for too few spots. The freshman class is limited to about 1400 kids. At Columbia. (Yes, they will squeeze in one or two more if Daddy promises to build a new dorm.) But colleges, despite their protestations, live and die by the rankings. And that is not only the “godfather” of all rankings – U.S. News – but dozens of others, including Forbes. And the not-at-all kept secret is that ranking is in large measure affected by a school’s selectivity: how many kids it rejects. Yes, there are other factors that help determine a college’s ranking: academic reputation, graduation rates, library size, and endowment are among the inputs. But the single factor that can show dramatic shifts in ranking in a single year is selectivity.

Consequently, colleges are not unhappy with soaring numbers of applications. Yes, it costs a bit more to process so many more, but that cost is offset by application fees charged to Mommy or daddy’s credit card that average $50 per college. (It costs $80 to apply to Columbia.) And with an estimated $15.00 in incremental costs per applicant – the 30 minutes, on average, the admission staff will spend with a difficult-to-decide application – the admission office is not quite a profit center for the college. But it isn’t losing money either.

So thanks to the ease of clicking that mouse, more kids received the (proverbial but sometimes real) thin envelope. They thought that by adding an extra college or two, they would improve their odds of getting into one of their dream schools. Unfortunately, the opposite was true. Because more kids applied to more colleges, the number of applications at each college increased, and the number of open spots held steady. And while it is true that colleges may have increased slightly the absolute number of kids they accepted to account for “yield” – the percentage of kids who choose to attend that particular college after being accepted there and probably at some other schools – the overall impact on admission probability did not make for a lot of happy campers.

Technology is, however, making the admissions a bit more transparent. One of the major players in the guidance space is a company called Naviance. Among the services it provides to high school guidance counselors is a software tool that allows each school to create “scattergrams” – graphical representations – of how kids from that particular high school have fared at specific colleges. Along one axis are SAT/ACT scores. Along the other are student GPA’s. And scattered on the resulting graph are little green boxes (representing acceptances) and “X’s” representing rejections.

“Technology is demystifying the admissions process and leveling the playing field for families, “ said Stephen Smith, CEO of Naviance. “Technology is making it easier to compare institutions in depth to find the best fit instead of relying on simple and subjective rankings.”

Another technological breakthrough that could adjust the odds a bit in a kid’s favor is called Zinch, and is run by a friend of mine named Anne Dwane. (Full disclosure here: We were so impressed with Anne and what Zinch is doing that we partnered with them on the newest edition of Getting In!)

Zinch was started less than four years ago by a Princeton freshman in his dorm room. Mick Hagen was amazed that he was accepted at Princeton. So as a freshman he investigated why he had been admitted. Not surprisingly, he learned that his SAT test scores and grades were the predominant factors, but that his extracurricular activities and personality had contributed to the decision. Not wanting to be thought of merely as a test score, he started Zinch as a way to help other kids showcase their talents to admission committees.

According to Dwane, colleges and universities – even highly selective schools – spend a fortune to attract applicants. The average amount spent by a private college to get an applicant is $2,200; and it costs public universities about $440 per applicant. Notice that number isn’t to get a kid to attend, merely to apply.

Why does it cost colleges so much to get a kid to apply? Because most colleges still market themselves just as they did 25 years ago: they buy lists of names of high school seniors from the College Board – sorted mostly by geography and SAT score. They then send those kids colorful, expensive brochures touting the college, with the hope that the student actually applies. Not surprisingly, most of those expensive four-color brochures and “view books” go straight into the garbage, and the cost per applicant soars.

Along comes Zinch. High school students are encouraged to create online “professional” profiles of themselves. These profiles are far different from what they typically post on their Facebook page; they are more like a pubescent LinkedIn profile. Kids talk about their grades, SAT’s, academic interests, extracurricular activities, and family background – hundreds of potential data-points. And then Zinch plays matchmaker between the colleges and interested or desirable kids.

For colleges, the Zinch database of college-bound kids makes an awful lot of sense. With about one million high school seniors creating profiles on Zinch each year, colleges can target kids based on much more granular criteria than if they merely buy names. And then the college gets connected with those kids in a medium – a social networking site – that is far more cost efficient for the school.

That does not mean the school is abandoning the slick, four-color, heavy stock brochures; they’re not. But they are sending them to kids who have shown an interest and given permission to start a dialogue.

It is easy to see what is in it for the college. But what’s in it for the kid? Interestingly, it is how most kids want to start a relationship with a school. It is their preferred means of communication. And because in the Zinch model the student has to give specific permission to allow communication from the school, the kids sense they have more control.

Almost every college admission office has set up a Facebook page. They understand, in theory, the importance of social media in their marketing mix. But only a handful of colleges have yet grasped the power of dialogue. Of the 800-plus colleges that use Zinch, fewer than 20% have really embraced the potential of this new medium.

But for those who have, the ROI has been significant. “The numbers speak for themselves,” said Jake Earl, an Admissions specialist at Marymount University. “The boost of 70-80 unique applications and 13 deposits is huge. There is not another tool that is so cost efficient. Finding students where they are and comfortable is extremely important, and Zinch gives the ability to do this in an easy manner.”

But does it start a real dialogue with the school’s admission office? Does it enable a kid to really showcase himself or herself to the college? The answer is sometimes.

The corollary question is whether the dialogue that ensues leads to a better fit between kid and college. And to that question, the answer is a resounding yes.

And a better fit is the antidote to the “just one more” mouse clicks that trigger long-shot applications and single-digit acceptance rates.

The revolution in college admission may be upon us. We just don’t know yet which way the cursor is going to scroll.

﻿This article was written with Michael Muska, Dean of College Placement at Poly Prep in Brooklyn. Our new book, Getting In! was just published by Wiley.